UC-NRLF 


725 


!j  ; 


GIFT   OF 
EVGENE  MEYER,«JR. 


LINCOLN  AND  SLAVERY 


LINCOLN  AND  SLAVERY 


BY 


ALBERT  E.   PILLSBURY 


BOSTON   AND    NEW   YORK 
HOUGHTON  MIFFLIN  COMPANY 
Cambrib0e 


.2- 

.75 


COPYRIGHT,   1913,   BY  ALBERT  E.   PILLSBURY 
ALL  RIGHTS  RESERVED 

Published  September  iqi3 


THIS  brief  review  of  Abraham  Lincoln's  real  atti 
tude  toward  Slavery  and  Emancipation  originated 
in  an  address  delivered  at  Howard  University 
on  the  fiftieth  anniversary  of  the  Emancipation 
Proclamation.  It  is  now  extended  by  the  intro 
duction  of  historical  evidence,  principally  from 
Lincoln  himself,  which  that  occasion  did  not 
permit.  Apart  from  his  conduct,  which  speaks 
for  itself  to  those  who  look  beneath  the  surface 
of  it,  nothing  can  contribute  so  much  as  his 
own  words  to  a  true  understanding  of  this  great 
American  in  the  supreme  act  of  his  life  and  one 
of  the  monumental  events  in  the  world's  history. 

BOSTON,  September  i,  1913. 


268674 


LINCOLN  AND  SLAVERY 

WHEN  the  conflict  between  Freedom 
and  Slavery  in  this  nation  was  ap 
proaching  its  crisis,  in  the  struggle  for 
possession  of  the  Nebraska  territory, 
a  new  and  singular  figure  appeared  at 
the  front  of  political  battle  in  the  West, 
moved  to  the  head  of  events,  passed 
across  the  world's  stage,  and  in  the 
short  space  of  seven  years  had  vanished 
from  the  sight  of  man. 

Within  such  narrow  bounds  of  time 
lies  a  career  the  like  of  which  is  not 
to  be  found  in  history.  In  the  elements 
of  wonder  and  marvel,  the  story  of 
Abraham  Lincoln's  life  and  death  is 
without  parallel  or  example.  From  the 
i 


LINCOLN   AND  SLAVERY 

mean  cabin  in  the  Kentucky  woods 
to  the  final  peak  of  transfiguration,  it 
moves  in  the  successive  acts  of  a  great 
tragic  drama,  reaching  the  high-water 
mark  of  human  achievement  and  sound 
ing  every  note  in  the  gamut  of  human 
emotion. 

In  the  scant  half-century  since  his 
death,  Abraham  Lincoln  has  engrossed 
more  of  the  world's  attention  than  any 
other  historic  personage.  Untiring  re 
search  has  tracked  him  from  the  cradle 
to  the  tomb.  The  remotest  spot  trodden 
by  his  foot  is  explored,  the  last  relative, 
friend,  or  acquaintance  examined  for 
any  word  or  look  of  the  great  man, 
every  act  of  his  life  is  studied,  every 
line  of  his  written  or  spoken  words  put 
under  review,  the  last  fragment  of  his 
correspondence  or  memoranda  is  drawn 

2 


LINCOLN   AND   SLAVERY 

from  its  hiding-place  or  is  on  the  way 
to  be,  every  trait  of  his  character,  every 
mood  of  his  mind,  every  feature  or  ex 
pression  of  his  face,  his  figure,  his  pose, 
his  movement,  is  canvassed,  printed, 
and  eagerly  read,  his  biographers  are 
now  becoming  the  subject  of  biography, 
and  the  Lincoln  literature  overflows 
the  libraries  day  by  day. 

The  materials  now  assembled  tell  us 
vastly  more  about  Lincoln  and  his  true 
relation  to  events  than  the  people  had 
found  out  in  his  own  time.  All  con 
temporary  judgment  of  him  is  defective 
for  want  of  knowledge,  and  there  is 
much  of  it  which  history  must  now  re 
ject.  This  plain  American  citizen  was 
one  of  the  most  complex  and  inscru 
table  of  all  the  great  historic  characters. 
He  was  full  of  the  oddest  incongruities. 
3  , 


LINCOLN   AND   SLAVERY 

By  turns  a  man  of  jest  and  laughter 
and  again  "  dripping,"  as  a  friend  said, 
with  melancholy;  ranging  in  thought 
and  speech  from  unquotable  plainness 
to  the  heights  of  the  human  intellect;  a 
shrewd,  practical  lawyer  and  politician 
dwelling  among  shadows,  dreaming 
dreams,  seeing  portents  and  feeling 
mysterious  influences  that  affected  his 
conduct;  the  most  unpretentious  of 
men,  set  in  the  homeliest  framework, 
thinking  with  the  power  of  Plato,  seeing 
with  the  eye  of  the  Sibyl,  speaking  like 
the  Hebrew  prophets.  The  story  of  his 
life  abounds  in  grotesque  incident,  al 
ways  of  the  humanest  character.  The 
strapping  young  giant  of  eighteen  takes 
upon  his  back  a  worthless  drunkard, 
perishing  with  cold,  and  totes  him  a 
mile  to  shelter.  The  lawyer  riding  the 

4 


LINCOLN   AND   SLAVERY 

circuit  goes  back  upon  his  trail  to  pull 
a  hapless  pig  out  of  the  mud  or  restore 
young  birds  to  their  nest.  The  official 
head  of  the  nation,  appealed  to  in  the 
public  street  by  a  maimed  soldier,  sits 
down  with  him  at  the  foot  of  the  first 
convenient  tree  to  write  an  order  for 
his  relief.  The  maker  of  an  epoch 
opens  his  cabinet  council  with  a  chap 
ter  of  Artemus  Ward,  and  checks  the 
laughter  to  present  the  Emancipation 
Proclamation. 

Yet  more  strange  and  startling  are 
the  dramatic  shifts  of  scene  and  cir 
cumstance  that  attend  the  unfolding 
of  this  unique  character.  The  forlorn 
backwoods  boy  turns  out  to  be  the  ap 
pointed  head  of  a  great  nation,  in  a 
crisis  affecting  the  fate  of  the  world. 
The  obscure  country  lawyer  reveals  in 
5 


LINCOLN   AND   SLAVERY 

a  phrase  what  a  people  is  waiting  to 
hear,  and  becomes  in  a  day  the  prophet 
of  the  cause.  The  uncouth  Westerner 
from  the  prairies,  unpracticed  in  arms 
or  in  statecraft,  outmasters  the  states 
men,  outwits  the  diplomatists,  gives 
the  generals  their  plan  of  campaign. 
The  unlettered  man  of  the  people 
speaks  lofty  eloquence,  soon  to  be 
come  classic.  The  raw  politician,  who 
never  held  public  power  for  a  day,  takes 
the  helm  of  state  when  the  ship  is 
already  on  the  rocks,  when  all  the 
pilots  and  captains  stand  helpless  and 
appalled,  to  bring  her  in  safety  and  tri 
umph  through  the  storm.  The  awk 
ward  clown,  reviled  and  lampooned 
over  two  continents,  in  four  years  is 
canonized  by  mankind.  Without  ori 
gin,  without  training,  without  an  ex- 
6 


LINCOLN   AND   SLAVERY 

ternal  attraction,  without  a  worldly 
advantage,  the  meanly-born  child  of  a 
poor  and  shiftless  emigrant  makes  his 
way  out  of  the  wilderness  to  fix  for  all 
time  the  eyes  of  the  world  as  leader  of 
a  people,  liberator  of  the  slave,  de 
liverer  of  his  country,  and  in  another 
turn  of  the  kaleidoscope,  to  be  num 
bered  with  martyrs  and  saints  in  glory 
everlasting. 

These  are  historical  facts,  but  they 
dazzle  the  imagination  and  disturb  the 
judgment.  All  through  the  web  of  this 
life  are  woven  threads  of  marvel  and 
mystery.  People  read  about  Lincoln 
with  a  weird  sense  of  the  supernatural, 
of  something  apart  from  human  affairs. 
They  think  of  another  Man  of  Sorrows, 
and  the  journey  from  the  manger  to  the 
cross,  the  crime  of  Cain,  the  translation 
7 


LINCOLN   AND  SLAVERY 

of  Elijah.  Nothing  in  human  biography 
stirs  the  imagination  like  this.  The  man 
of  history  is  already  become  a  man  of 
fable,  and  in  some  distant  day  learned 
doctors  will  dispute  whether  Abraham 
Lincoln  was  a  real  character  or  a  hero 
of  tradition,  belonging  in  limbo  with 
Romulus  and  King  Arthur. 

What  was  this  man,  that  he  has  taken 
such  a  marvelous  hold  upon  the  in 
terest  of  the  world?  What  was  there 
in  him  or  about  him  that  makes  us  dis 
trust  our  senses  as  we  follow  the  steps 
of  his  amazing  progress?  Do  we  see 
him  as  he  was,  or  do  we  see  an  image, 
an  aureole,  a  legendary  figure? 

Abraham  Lincoln  is  not  a  myth,  nor 

is  he  like  any  other  man.  A  man  of 

destiny,  if  there  is  such  a  character  in 

history,  a  man  of  many  mysteries,  his 

8 


LINCOLN   AND   SLAVERY 

hold  upon  mankind  is  not  a  mystery. 
He  was  a  new  type  of  man  — "  new 
birth  of  our  new  soil,"  an  unspoiled 
product  of  nature  to  whom  all  the  world 
is  akin.  History  is  full  of  personages 
who  strike  the  eye  with  great  and  illus 
trious  deeds.  Here  is  one  of  the  fore 
most  of  them  who  stirs  the  heart  with 
every  element  of  human  sympathy. 
More  than  this,  he  touches  the  uni 
versal  instinct  of  freedom,  a  chord  that 
vibrates  around  the  world.  Abraham 
Lincoln  is  forever  identified  with  the 
cause  of  human  liberty.  When  all  his 
other  greatness  is  forgotten,  history  /v 
and  legend  will  remember  him  as 
emancipator  of  a  race  and  martyr  of 
freedom. 

For  this  he  is  receiving,  and  he  will 
continue  to  receive,  the  homage  of  the 

9 


LINCOLN   AND   SLAVERY 

world.  Does  it  belong  to  him?  Doubts 
are  cast  upon  his  title,  by  indirection  if 
not  directly.  Was  Abraham  Lincoln  a 
moral  hero,  whose  place  is  among  the 
foremost  of  mankind,  or  was  he  a  mere 
time-server,  a  mere  Union-saver,  wield- 
^H^ing  power  with  the  cold  hand  of  po 
litical  expediency,  careless  that  the  fate 
of  a  race  or  of  freedom  itself  might  be 
staked  upon  the  issue,  who  came  hesi 
tating  and  reluctant  to  Emancipation 
and  decreed  the  freedom  of  millions  as 
an  unavoidable  move  in  the  game  of 
war?  Which  is  the  real  Abraham  Lin 
coln? 

There  is  a  belated  but  persisting  view 
of  this  great  character  as  a  sort  of  sub 
limated  politician,  concerned  only  with 
saving  the  Union,  by  any  means  at  his 
command,  indifferent  to  the  national 
10 


LINCOLN   AND   SLAVERY 

crime  of  slavery  and  willing  to  see  it 
continue  if  so  the  Union  could  be  pre 
served.  It  originated  in  the  complaints 
of  hot  and  impatient  anti-slavery  lead 
ers  before  Lincoln  was  firm  in  the 
presidency,  and  is  now  taken  up  and 
perpetuated  by  all  the  apologists  for 
slavery  and  rebellion.  If  this  is  a  cor 
rect  estimate  of  his  character,  he  never 
rose  to  the  moral  level  of  his  own  act  of 
emancipation,  and  the  exaltation  of  such 
a  man  into  a  world-hero  is  a  delusion. 

A  profound  question  of  right  and 
wrong  underlies  the  rebellion  and  the 
events  that  produced  it,  by  which  the 
claim  of  Abraham  Lincoln  to  the  true 
title  of  Emancipator  must  finally  be  tried. 
We  are  now  living  in  a  generation  that 
never  saw  Freedom  and  Slavery  facing 
1 1 


LINCOLN   AND   SLAVERY 

each  other.  It  has  become  fashionable 
to  divert  public  attention  from  the  mov 
ing  cause  of  a  bloody  war,  lest  the 
truth  may  offend  some  sensibilities  or 
mar  some  reputations.  We  are  told 
that  the  war,  on  the  part  of  the  South, 
was  a  patriotic  if  misguided  attempt  to 
vindicate  the  rights  of  the  States,  and 
on  the  part  of  the  North,  a  war  for  the 
Union.  In  the  interest  of  national  har 
mony  we  must  shut  the  skeleton  slavery 
into  the  closet  and  turn  the  key  upon 
it,  politely  ignoring  historical  truth.  A 
part  of  the  popular  perversion  of  history 
is  to  make  Lincoln  appear  indifferent 
to  slavery,  and  willing  to  save  it  if  he 
could  save  the  Union.  So  shall  the 
reverence  paid  to  his  memory  help  to 
cover  the  ancient  guilt  and  justify  the 
new  bondage  of  the  oppressed  race. 
12 


LINCOLN   AND  SLAVERY 

What  is  the  historical  truth?  From 
1820  to  the  downfall  of  the  rebellion, 
every  question  of  American  politics 
turned,  directly  or  indirectly,  upon  slav 
ery.  A  war  for  vindication  of  state 
rights?  After  1833,  when  the  illumined 
logic  of  Webster  and  the  grim  front  of 
Andrew  Jackson  had  disposed  of  nulli 
fication,  the  first  fruit  of  the  slave  sys 
tem,  the  right  of  a  state  to  secede  from 
the  Union  was,  as  Lincoln  truly  said, 
no  longer  an  open  or  debatable  ques 
tion,  and  no  state  rights  were  ever  in 
dispute.  The  right  to  hunt  slaves  in  the 
free  states,  and  to  carry  slavery  into 
free  territory,  were  not  state  rights.  If 
they  were  rights  at  all,  they  were  per 
sonal  rights  of  the  slaveholder.  A  war 
for  the  Union?  Nothing  but  slavery 
ever  threatened  the  Union.  The  South- 
13 


LINCOLN   AND   SLAVERY 

ern  states  did  not  make  the  war,  nor  the 
Southern  people.  They  were  whipped 
into  it  by  a  slaveholding  oligarchy,  that 
never  embraced  a  tenth  of  the  white 
population  of  the  South  but  ruled  the 
majority  with  an  iron  hand  in  the  in 
terest  of  the  slave  system.  The  war  was 
a  slaveholders'  rebellion,  treasonably 
waged  against  the  United  States  for 
the  single  purpose  of  establishing  upon 
this  continent  an  independent  slave- 
empire.  In  Lincoln's  words,  it  was  "an 
attempt,  for  the  first  time  in  the  world, 
to  construct  a  new  nation  on  the  basis 
of  human  slavery."  It  was  a  war  about 
slavery,  and  about  nothing  else.  It  ac 
complished  the  extinction  of  slavery, 
and  it  accomplished  nothing  else.  Wit 
ness  the  record,  as  written  by  the  people 
in  the  three  Amendments  of  the  Con- 
H 


LINCOLN   AND   SLAVERY 

stitution,  every  line  directed  to  secure 
the  freedom  of  the  emancipated  slave. 

If  slavery  was  a  wicked  system,  a  war 
to  perpetuate  it  was  a  twice-wicked 
war.  For  the  iniquity  of  slavery  we 
need  not  rely  upon  preachers  or  moral 
ists,  or  the  universal  opinion  of  all  en 
lightened  men  and  Christian  nations. 
It  was  openly  confessed  by  the  whole 
American  people  when  the  United 
States  in  1820  joined  with  the  other 
great  powers  of  the  world  in  branding 
the  slave-trade  as  piracy  and  punishing 
it  with  death.  If  any  distinction  can  be 
drawn  between  the  guilt  of  the  slave- 
trader,  a  mere  incident  of  the  system, 
and  the  guilt  of  the  slaveholder,  who 
constituted  the  system,  it  is  not  in  favor 
of  the  slaveholder. 

If   Abraham  Lincoln,    alive    to   the 


LINCOLN   AND   SLAVERY 

moral  aspect  of  slavery,  seized  the  first 
opportunity  to  strike  it  down  as  fatal  to 
the  principles  of  justice  and  liberty  on 
which  a  restored  or  permanent  Union 
must  depend,  insisting  that  freedom 
should  be  made  universal  for  all  time  by 
writing  it  into  the  Federal  charter,  he 
was  in  truth  the  Emancipator.  My  pur 
pose  is  to  recall  some  of  the  historical 
evidences  in  which  his  true  attitude  to 
ward  slavery  and  emancipation  appears. 

The  contest  between  Freedom  and 
Slavery,  breaking  out  openly  in  the  ad 
mission  of  Missouri  to  the  Union  as  a 
slave  state  and  temporarily  suppressed 
by  the  compromise  forbidding  slavery 
north  of  the  36-30  line,  was  thenceforth 
the  only  vital  issue  before  the  American 
people.  The  slave-power,  aggressive 
16 


LINCOLN   AND   SLAVERY 

and  defiant,  advanced  with  startling 
strides  through  the  annexation  of  Texas, 
the  Mexican  war,  the  compromise-sur 
render  of  1850,  the  repeal  of  the  Mis 
souri  compromise,  the  raid  upon  the 
Nebraska  territory  then  embracing 
Kansas,  and  the  Dred  Scott  manifesto 
of  the  Supreme  Court,  a  decree  that 
"went  forth  without  authority  and  came 
back  without  respect,"  declaring  the 
Federal  Constitution  a  charter  for  slav 
ery  in  the  free  territories.  This  course 
of  events  produced  the  Abraham  Lin 
coln  of  history. 

What  had  been  the  general  attitude 
toward  slavery  of  the  man  who  issued 
the  Emancipation  Proclamation  ?  What 
did  Lincoln  think  about  slavery  before 
he  became  a  public  character? 


LINCOLN   AND   SLAVERY 

We  need  not  hear  him  say,  as  he  often 
said,  that  he  "always  hated  slavery," 
the  words  of  a  man  slow  to  censure 
and  not  a  man  of  hate.  It  was  Abraham 
Lincoln  who  pronounced  the  completest 
judgment  against  slavery  ever  put  in 
words.  "If  slavery  is  not  wrong,  noth 
ing  is  wrong."  "I  cannot  remember," 
he  says,  "when  I  did  not  so  think  and 
feel." 

Was  it  the  intuition  of  a  spirited  child 
born  into  a  system  that  degraded  white 
poverty  even  more  than  it  degraded  the 
negro,  or  did  it  begin  with  the  flatboat 
trip  to  New  Orleans,  when  slavery,  wit 
ness  John  Hanks,  "ran  its  iron  into 
him  "  at  the  first  sight  of  the  lash  and 
the  auction-block  ?  His  nearest  friend 
and  biographer  gives  credit  to  the  story, 
curious  and  suggestive  if  true,  that  he 
18 


LINCOLN   AND   SLAVERY 

then  and  there  said  to  his  companions, 
with  an  imprecation  that  rarely  issued 
from  his  lips,  "  Boys,  if  I  ever  get  a 
chance  to  hit  that  thing,  I  '11  hit  it  hard." 
A  forgotten  lecture,  produced  by  the 
young  Lincoln  in  his  twenties,  declares 
the  freeing  of  slaves  to  be  one  of  the 
highest  objects  of  human  achievement. 
What  put  this  into  the  head  of  the  back 
woods  youth  in  a  pro-slavery  commu 
nity?  The  burning  of  a  negro  by  a  St. 
Louis  mob  stirred  him  to  one  of  his 
earliest  speeches  — on  Liberty,  the  sub 
ject  always  uppermost  in  his  mind  —  a 
speech  that  has  the  added  interest  of 
showing  that  Lincoln,  like  Webster, 
began  with  a  grandiloquent  manner, 
imitated  from  the  spread-eagle  oratory 
of  the  period,  before  he  developed  his 
own  inimitable  style. 


LINCOLN  AND   SLAVERY 

x— > 

If  Abraham  Lincoln  ever  uttered  a 
word  in  extenuation  of  slavery,  the  fact 
has  not  appeared  in  history.  It  needs 
not  his  words  to  show  how  he  felt  to 
ward  such  a  system.  His  whole  life, 
now  open  to  the  world,  was  an  all-em 
bracing  sympathy  with  the  oppressed 
and  down-trodden  that  beat  in  every 
pulsation  of  his  heart.  To  hate  slavery 
was  in  his  blood.  It  was  a  law  of  his 
being. 

What  was  Lincoln's  attitude  toward 
slavery  as  a  public  character  and  po 
litical  leader? 

The  first  significant  public  act  of  his 
life,  in  the  Illinois  legislature  at  the  age 
of  twenty-eight,  was  the  recorded  pro 
test  against  resolutions  asserting  the 
"sacred"  right  of  property  in  slaves,  a 

20 


LINCOLN   AND   SLAVERY 

claim  which  Lincoln  always  resented 
as  profanation.  The  protest,  so  moder 
ate  that  it  now  appears  apologetic,  was 
then  so  bold  that  but  one  colleague 
could  be  found  to  stand  with  him.  Illi 
nois  was  still  pro-slavery,  with  a  "black 
code"  of  unsparing  severity,  and  but  a 
few  years  removed  from  an  attempt  to 
make  it  a  slave  state.  This  was  the  year 
of  Lovejoy's  murder  by  the  Alton  mob, 
uncondemned  and  unpunished  by  Illi 
nois,  when  nothing  but  the  timely  ap 
pearance  of  Wendell  Phillips  saved 
Faneuil  Hall  from  capture  by  the  apolo 
gists  for  that  crime  against  humanity. 

In  his  single  term  in  Congress  Lin 
coln  stood  with  the  most  advanced  op 
ponents  of  slavery,  joining  in  all  their 
denunciations  of  the  Mexican  war, 
which  he  stigmatized  in  his  "spot  reso- 
21 


LINCOLN   AND   SLAVERY 

lutions"  then  celebrated  but  now  for 
gotten,  voting  "  at  least  forty  times,"  as 
he  said,  for  the  Wilmot  Proviso,  and 
finally  introducing  a  bill  to  abolish  slav 
ery  in  the  District  of  Columbia.  This 
measure,  wrenched  out  of  the  setting 
of  1849  m  which  it  belongs,  has  been 
supposed  to  show  a  tenderness  toward 
slavery.  Moderate  and  guarded  as  it 
was,  there  is  no  doubt  that  Lincoln 
risked  his  political  future  in  presenting 
it.  As  a  direct  step  toward  abolition  in 
the  only  place  where  slavery  existed 
within  reach  of  Federal  power,  an  act 
finally  accomplished  after  many  years 
only  by  stress  of  war,  when  it  was  Lin 
coln's  privilege  to  seal  it  with  his  offi 
cial  approval,  it  branded  him  in  politics 
as  an  abolitionist,  and  many  of  his  friends 
believed  that  his  open  hostility  to  slav- 

22 


LINCOLN   AND   SLAVERY 

ery  had  sacrificed  all  hope  of  political 
advancement. 

Indeed,  when  Lincoln  returned  from 
Congress  he  seems  to  have  regarded 
himself  as  through  with  public  affairs. 
There  are  signs  at  this  time  of  his  tem 
peramental  depression.  The  revelation 
had  not  come  to  him.  But  the  Compro 
mise  of  1850  stirred  him  uneasily  and 
would  not  let  him  rest.  He  said  to  his 
friend  Stuart,  "The  time  will  come 
when  we  must  all  be  Democrats  or 
Abolitionists.  When  that  time  comes, 
my  mind  is  made  up.  The  slavery  ques 
tion  can't  be  compromised."  This  set 
him  to  brooding  deeply  upon  slavery 
and  its  bearing  upon  the  fate  of  the  na 
tion,  on  which  it  is  now  historic  that 
he  became  the  clearest  and  profoundest 
thinker  of  his  time.  It  took  possession 
23 


LINCOLN   AND   SLAVERY 

of  him.  He  "moused  around  the  li 
braries,"  absorbing  the  history  of  the 
institution  and  pondering  every  phase 
of  the  subject  in  long  fits  of  silent  ab 
straction.  A  manuscript  fragment  of 
this  period,  of  which  it  is  said  that  he 
usually  carried  a  hatful,  goes  to  the 
roots  of  slavery  and  gives  a  glimpse  at 
the  working  habit  and  logical  precision 
of  his  mind:  — 

"If  A  can  prove,  however  conclu 
sively,  that  he  may  of  right  enslave  B, 
why  may  not  B  snatch  the  same  argu 
ment  and  prove  equally  that  he  may 
enslave  A?  You  say  A  is  white  and  B 
is  black.  It  is  color,  then;  the  lighter 
having  the  right  to  enslave  the  darker? 
Take  care.  By  this  rule  you  are  to  be 
slave  to  the  first  man  you  meet  with  a 
fairer  skin  than  your  own.  You  do  not 
mean  color  exactly?  You  mean  the 
whites  are  intellectually  the  superiors 
24 


LINCOLN   AND   SLAVERY 

of  the  blacks,  and  therefore  they  have 
the  right  to  enslave  them?  Take  care 
again.  By  this  rule  you  are  to  be  slave 
to  the  first  man  you  meet  with  an  intel 
lect  superior  to  your  own.  But,  you  say, 
it  is  a  question  of  interest,  and  if  you 
make  it  your  interest,  you  have  the  right 
to  enslave  another.  Very  well.  And  if 
he  can  make  it  his  interest,  he  has  the 
right  to  enslave  you." 

Lincoln's  clear  and  direct  intellect 
went  straight  to  the  question  whether 
Slavery  and  Freedom  can  permanently 
dwell  together  in  the  same  house.  In 
this  interval  he  read  the  horoscope  of 
slavery,  and  when  he  began  to  speak 
out,  it  was  like  the  voice  of  a  prophet 
denouncing  the  vision. 

The  threat  to  repeal  the  Missouri 
Compromise,  opening  to  slavery  the  ter 
ritory  long  pledged  to  freedom,  aroused 

25 


LINCOLN  AND   SLAVERY 

Lincoln  once  for  all.  From  this  time  he 
avowed  his  purpose  to  press  the  assault 
against  slavery  to  the  limit  of  Federal 
power,  "until  the  sun  shall  shine,  the 
rain  shall  fall,  the  wind  shall  blow,  upon 
no  man  who  goes  forth  to  unrequited 
toil."  The  Peoria  speech  of  1854,  plainly 
the  product  of  deep  thought  and  unfold 
ing  for  the  first  time  Lincoln's  matured 
mental  attitude,  forecasts  all  his  later 
utterances  in  putting  political  opposi 
tion  to  slavery  squarely  upon  the  moral 
ground,  denouncing  the  iniquity  of  the 
system  and  openly  declaring,  as  the 
final  reason  against  it  on  which  the  bat 
tle  must  turn,  that  slavery  is  wrong.  It 
was  the  precursor  of  the  celebrated 
"lost  speech"  of  1856  at  Bloomington, 
and  those  who  heard  both  declare  that 
on  each  occasion  he  was  so  wrought 
26 


LINCOLN   AND   SLAVERY 

up  with  his  theme  as  fairly  to  "quiver 
with  emotion."  Nothing  ever  stirred 
Lincoln  like  slavery,  the  subject  of  all 
his  later  speeches,  or  moved  him  to 
such  eloquence  and  depth  of  feeling. 
Denouncing  slavery  as  "  the  only  thing 
that  ever  endangered  the  Union,"  he 
takes  the  field  against  it  at  Peoria  in 
utterances  like  these:  — 

"This  declared  indifference  but,  as  I 
must  think,  covert  zeal  for  the  spread 
of  slavery,  I  cannot  but  hate.  I  hate  it 
because  of  the  monstrous  injustice  of 
slavery  itself.  I  hate  it  because  it  de 
prives  our  republican  example  of  its 
just  influence  in  the  world;  enables  the 
enemies  of  free  institutions  with  plausi 
bility  to  taunt  us  as  hypocrites;  causes 
the  real  friends  of  freedom  to  doubt 
our  sincerity;  and  especially  because  it 
forces  so  many  really  good  men  among 
ourselves  into  an  open  war  with  the 
27 


LINCOLN   AND   SLAVERY 

very   fundamental    principles    of    civil 
liberty." 

"  If  the  negro  is  a  man,  is  it  not  to 
that  extent  a  total  destruction  of  self- 
government  to  say  that  he  too  shall  not 
govern  himself?  When  the  white  man 
governs  himself,  that  is  self-govern 
ment;  but  when  he  governs  himself 
and  also  governs  another  man,  that  is 
more  than  self-government  —  that  is 
despotism.  If  the  negro  is  a  man,  then 
my  ancient  faith  teaches  me  that  all 
men  are  created  equal,  and  that  there 
can  be  no  moral  right  in  one  man  mak 
ing  a  slave  of  another." 

"  No  man  is  good  enough  to  govern 
another  man  without  that  other's  con 
sent." 

"The  master  not  only  governs  the 
slave  without  his  consent,  but  he  gov 
erns  him  by  a  set  of  rules  altogether  dif 
ferent  from  those  which  he  prescribes 
for  himself.  Allow  all  the  governed  an 
28 


LINCOLN   AND  SLAVERY 

equal   voice  in   the   government;  that, 
and  that  only,  is  self-government." 


.. 


Slavery  is  founded  in  the  selfish 
ness  of  man's  nature  —  opposition  to  it, 
in  his  love  of  justice.  These  principles 
are  an  eternal  antagonism;  and  when 
brought  into  collision  so  fiercely  as 
slavery  extension  brings  them,  shocks 
and  throes  and  convulsions  must  cease 
lessly  follow.  Repeal  the  Missouri  Com 
promise — repeal  all  compromises  —  re 
peal  the  Declaration  of  Independence 
—  repeal  all  past  history  —  still  you 
cannot  repeal  human  nature." 

"I  particularly  object  to  the  new  po 
sition  which  the  avowed  principle  of 
this  Nebraska  law  gives  to  slavery  in 
the  body  politic.  I  object  to  it  because 
it  assumes  that  there  can  be  moral  right 
in  the  enslaving  of  one  man  by  an 
other." 

"  Little  by  little,  but  steadily  as  man's 
march  to  the  grave,  we  have  been  giv- 
29 


LINCOLN  AND  SLAVERY 

ing  up  the  old  for  the  new  faith.  Near 
eighty  years  ago  we  began  by  declar 
ing  that  all  men  are  created  equal;  but 
now  from  that  beginning  we  have  run 
down  to  the  other  declaration  that  for 
some  men  to  enslave  others  is  a  '  sacred 
right  of  self-government.'  These  prin 
ciples  cannot  stand  together.  They  are 
as  opposite  as  God  and  Mammon." 

"In  our  greedy  chase  to  make  profit 
of  the  negro,  let  us  beware  lest  we  can 
cel  and  tear  in  pieces  even  the  white 
man's  charter  of  freedom.  Our  repub 
lican  robe  is  soiled  and  trailed  in  the 
dust.  Let  us  repurify  it.  Let  us  turn 
and  wash  it  white  in  the  spirit,  if  not 
the  blood,  of  the  Revolution.  Let  us 
turn  slavery  from  its  claims  of  'moral 
right '  back  upon  its  existing  legal  rights 
and  its  arguments  of  '  necessity.' ' 

Three   years    later,   in   a   speech   at 
Springfield,  he  draws  this  picture:  — 
30 


LINCOLN   AND   SLAVERY 

"In  those  days  our  Declaration  of 
Independence  was  held  sacred  by  all, 
and  thought  to  include  all;  but  now,  to 
aid  in  making  the  bondage  of  the  negro 
universal  and  eternal,  it  is  assailed, 
sneered  at,  construed,  hawked  at,  and 
torn,  till,  if  its  framers  could  rise  from 
their  graves,  they  could  not  recognize 
it.  All  the  powers  of  the  earth  seem 
rapidly  combining  against  him.  Mam 
mon  is  after  him;  ambition  follows; 
philosophy  follows;  and  the  theology 
of  the  day  is  fast  joining  the  cry.  They 
have  him  in  his  prison-house;  they  have 
searched  his  person  and  left  no  prying 
instrument  with  him.  One  after  another, 
they  have  closed  the  heavy  iron  doors 
upon  him;  and  now  they  have  him,  as 
it  were,  bolted  in,  with  a  lock  of  a  hun 
dred  keys,  which  can  never  be  unlocked 
without  the  consent  of  every  key;  the 
keys  in  the  hands  of  a  hundred  different 
men,  and  they  scattered  to  a  hundred 
different  and  distant  places;  and  they 


LINCOLN   AND   SLAVERY 

stand  musing  as  to  what  invention,  in 
all  the  dominions  of  mind  and  matter, 
can  be  produced  to  make  the  impossi 
bility  of  his  escape  more  complete  than 
it  is." 

Again,  he  answers  to  the  bogey  of 
"negro  equality,"  a  ghost  that  never 
could  be  laid  and  stalks  abroad  in  its 
most  forbidding  shape  after  half  a  cen 
tury  of  freedom:  — 

"  I  protest  against  the  counterfeit  logic 
which  concludes  that  because  I  do  not 
want  a  black  woman  for  a  slave,  I  must 
necessarily  want  her  for  a  wife." 

"All  I  ask  for  the  negro  is  that  if 
you  do  not  like  him,  let  him  alone.  If 
God  gave  him  but  little,  that  little  let 
him  enjoy." 

"  I  hold  that  there  is  no  reason  in  the 

world  why  the  negro  is  not  entitled  to 

all  the  natural  rights  enumerated  in  the 

Declaration  of  Independence,  the  right 

32 


LINCOLN   AND   SLAVERY 

to  life,  liberty,  and  the  pursuit  of  happi 
ness.  I  hold  that  he  is  as  much  entitled 
to  these  as  the  white  man.  I  agree  that 
he  is  not  my  equal  in  many  respects, 
certainly  not  in  color,  perhaps  not  in 
moral  or  intellectual  endowment;  but 
in  the  ri^ht  to  eat  the  bread  without  the 

o 

leave  of  anybody  else,  which  his  own 
hand  earns,  he  is  my  equal  and  the  equal 
of  every  living  man." 

Lincoln,  the  politician,  was  now  speak 
ing  apostolic  words  of  freedom.  Putting 
polite  phrases  and  compromising  shifts 
behind  him,  he  brings  slavery  to  the 
bar  of  political  opinion  as  a  system  of 
iniquity,  lifting  the  discussion  into  the 
realm  of  morals  and  making  an  issue 
which  even  a  politician's  conscience 
cannot  evade.  The  struggle  between 
Freedom  and  Slavery  was  now  centered 
upon  Douglas's  Nebraska  bill.  As  the 
33 


LINCOLN   AND   SLAVERY 

most  conspicuous  opponent  of  this  meas 
ure,  Lincoln  took  his  stand  upon  the 
moral  wrong  of  the  slave  system,  and 
all  the  anti-slavery  forces,  then  crystal 
lizing  into  a  new  and  powerful  political 
party,  had  to  follow  and  stand  with 
him  upon  that  ground.  The  abolition 
ists  had  gone  before  him  and  done  their 
work,  of  which  Lincoln  himself  may 
have  been  a  part.  His  bosom  compan 
ion  Herndon,  an  ardent  disciple  of 
Garrison  and  Theodore  Parker,  de 
clared  that  Lincoln  was  "  baptized  into 
the  abolition  church  "  on  the  occasion 
of  the  Bloomington  speech.  The  abo 
litionists  had  planted  and  watered,  but 
it  remained  to  gather  the  increase. 
They  could  not  harvest  in  political  con 
ventions  or  in  the  ballot-box  the  crop 
which  they  had  sown.  At  the  oppor- 
34 


LINCOLN   AND   SLAVERY 

tune  moment,  Lincoln  appeared  in  the 
field  and  hitched  the  moral  forces  of 
abolition  to  the  moving  car  of  political 
events. 


Following  the  repeal  of  the  Missouri 
Compromise,  and  while  the  battle  was 
still  raging  in  Kansas,  came  the  Dred 
Scott  declaration  of  the  Supreme  Court 
that  the  Federal  Constitution  forbade 
the  exclusion  of  slavery  from  the  free 
territories.  Lincoln's  acute  political 
vision  at  once  perceived  that  the  same 
doctrine,  if  carried  a  step  farther,  would 
make  slavery  lawful  in  the  free  states. 
He  challenged  the  attention  of  the  coun 
try  to  the  new  peril  in  that  history- 
making  speech  now  memorable  and 
familiar:  — 

"'Ahouse  divided  against  itself  can- 
35 


LINCOLN   AND   SLAVERY 

not  stand.'  I  believe  this  government 
cannot  endure  permanently  half  slave 
and  half  free.  I  do  not  expect  the  Union 
to  be  dissolved;  I  do  not  expect  the 
house  to  fall;  but  I  do  expect  it  will 
cease  to  be  divided.  It  will  become  all 
the  one  thing,  or  all  the  other.  Either 
the  opponents  of  slavery  will  arrest  the 
further  spread  of  it,  and  place  it  where 
the  public  mind  shall  rest  in  the  belief 
that  it  is  in  the  course  of  ultimate  ex 
tinction,  or  its  advocates  will  push  it 
forward  till  it  shall  become  alike  law 
ful  in  all  the  states,  old  as  well  as  new. 
North  as  well  as  South." 

This  was  the  trumpet  calling  to  bat 
tle.  Nothing  like  it  had  ever  been  heard 
from  a  recognized  political  leader.  It 
antedated  and  outran  Seward's  "  irre 
pressible  conflict,"  and  it  came  from  a 
man  whose  words  were  shaping  the 
course  of  momentous  political  events. 

36 


LINCOLN   AND   SLAVERY 

This  was  Lincoln's  response  to  the 
Dred  Scott  declaration,  and  marks  the 
next  line  of  his  advance.  Slavery  is 
irreconcilable  not  only  with  Union,  but 
with  freedom  in  the  free  states.  If  it 
goes  on,  it  will  become  universal.  The 
time  has  come  when  the  people  must 
set  their  house  in  order,  by  putting  it  in 
course  of  extinction.  The  words  mean 
nothing  less  than  this,  and  the  bold  and 
startling  figure  drove  the  meaning  home. 
In  this  speech  Lincoln  fairly  put  slav 
ery  on  the  defensive  before  the  political 
power  of  the  nation.  With  a  full  sense 
of  its  importance,  he  had  consulted  his 
friends,  who  warned  him  against  a  dec 
laration  so  radical  as  to  invite  defeat. 
To  this  Lincoln  replied,  "with  strong 
emotion,"  as  we  are  told,  "The  time 
has  come  when  this  should  be  said.  If 

37 


LINCOLN   AND   SLAVERY 

I  must  go  down,  let  me  go  down  linked 
to  the  truth.  This  nation  cannot  live  on 
injustice."  To  the  reproaches  that  fol 
lowed  the  speech  he  rejoined,  "  If  I  had 
to  draw  pen  across  my  whole  record 
leaving  one  thing  unerased,  it  should 
be  that  speech.  You  will  live  to  regard 
it  as  the  wisest  thing  I  ever  said." 

It  is  recorded  that  to  those  about 
him  Lincoln  was  now  as  one  inspired. 
"Sometimes,"  he  says,  "I  seem  to  see 
the  end  of  slavery.  I  feel  that  the  time 
is  soon  coming.  How  it  will  come, 
when  it  will  come,  by  whom  it  will 
come,  I  cannot  tell,  but  that  time  will 
surely  come." 

The  debate  with  Douglas  followed, 
now  classic  in  history  and  literature. 
Was  it  chance  or  destiny  that  gave  Lin- 

38 


LINCOLN   AND   SLAVERY 

coin  this  opportunity  ?  The  influence  of 
Douglas  upon  Lincoln's  career  is  a  curi 
ous  episode  in  a  life  full  of  strange  events. 
Rivals  in  their  early  years  at  the  bar, 
rivals  for  the  hand  of  a  woman,  rivals 
in  politics,  and  finally  for  the  highest 
political  distinction,  the  revelation  of 
Abraham  Lincoln  to  the  country  was 
outwardly  due  to  the  circumstance  that 
his  home  was  the  home  of  Douglas.  As 
leader  of  the  pro-slavery  forces,  author 
and  principal  exponent  of  the  Nebraska 
bill,  now  engaged  in  a  "  squabble,"  as 
Lincoln  called  it,  with  the  titular  head 
of  his  party,  and  struggling  to  keep  his 
hold  on  Illinois  and  his  place  in  the 
Senate,  Douglas  held  the  center  of  the 
political  stage,  in  the  fiercest  light  of 
publicity.  In  this  reflected  light  Lin 
coln  first  became  visible  to  the  nation, 
39 


LINCOLN   AND   SLAVERY 

as  the  only  champion  fit  to  enter  the 
lists  against  the  most  adroit,  audacious, 
and  resourceful  of  all  the  protagonists 
of  slavery.  After  the  great  debate  is 
over,  and  after  Douglas  has  gone  down 
in  "the  battle  of  1860,"  a  whimsical  fate 
makes  him  reappear  on  the  inaugural 
platform  at  the  Capitol,  to  publicly  em 
phasize  his  position  as  a  Union  man, 
where  he  takes  upon  himself  the  modest 
office  of  holding  Lincoln's  hat  while 
that  lifelong  adversary  is  crowned  with 
the  republican  diadem. 

Nothing  in  the  annals  of  our  political 
forum  but  the  meeting  of  Webster  with 
Hayne  and  Calhoun  can  be  compared, 
in  the  magnitude  of  its  consequences,  to 
the  contest  of  1858.  Douglas  meant  to 
make  his  quarrel  with  Buchanan  win 
the  battle  for  him,  by  dividing  the  anti- 
40 


LINCOLN   AND   SLAVERY 

Nebraska  men.  In  this  he  would  have 
succeeded  against  any  opponent  less 
wary  and  resolute  than  Lincoln,  who 
held  him,  with  a  grip  that  never  re 
laxed,  to  the  moral  issue  of  the  right  or 
wrong  of  slavery.  Here  Douglas  was 
fatally  weak  and  foredoomed  to  ulti 
mate  defeat.  In  an  unguarded  moment 
he  had  dropped  the  remark  that  he  did 
not  "  care  whether  slavery  is  voted  up 
or  voted  down."  The  fatal  persistence 
with  which  he  was  held  to  this  unhappy 
admission  is  a  striking  example  of  Lin 
coln's  skill  and  sagacity  in  managing 
an  argument  or  a  cause.  In  the  historic 
question  put  to  Douglas  at  Freeport, 
whether  the  people  of  a  territory  can 
in  any  lawful  way  exclude  slavery,  Lin 
coln  again  displayed  the  foresight  and 
courage  of  a  great  leader.  Said  his 


LINCOLN   AND   SLAVERY 

friends,  "If  you  put  that  question  to 
Douglas,  he  will  beat  you  and  win  the 
senatorship,"  to  which  Lincoln  quietly 
rejoined,  "I  am  hunting  larger  game. 
If  he  answers  the  question  he  can  never 
be  president,  and  the  battle  of  1860  is 
worth  a  hundred  of  this."  He  had  to 
answer  yes,  or  lose  Illinois,  and  "of  that 
answer,"  as  Herndon  said,  "Douglas 
instantly  died."  Under  the  compelling 
hand  of  the  master  politician,  he  had 
flung  away  the  South  and  rent  the  party 
of  slavery  in  twain. 

Among  Lincoln's  gifts  none,  perhaps, 
is  more  remarkable  than  his  power  of 
forecasting  the  future.  Did  he  already 
see  the  destiny  that  was  opening  before 
him?  The  significance  of  this  answer 
to  his  friends  is  almost  unmistakable. 
Did  he  already  see  the  slave-power 
42 


LINCOLN   AND   SLAVERY 

disintegrated  and  broken,  the  champion 
of  freedom  in  this  debate  at  the  head  of 
the  party  of  freedom  in  "  the  battle  of 
1860,"  and  prevailing  victorious  over  a 
divided  enemy?  This  is  not  incapable 
of  belief,  but  he  made  no  sign.  It  turned 
out  to  be  the  course  of  history.  When 
the  contest  of  1858  was  over,  Lincoln 
had  lost  the  senatorship  to  Douglas 
and  Douglas  had  lost  the  presidency  to 
Lincoln,  who  had  bagged  the  "  larger 
game  "  and  won  the  mighty  opportunity 
of  reconsecrating  the  Union  to  free 
dom. 

Rarely  has  oratory  raised  a  more 
striking  monument  to  its  own  power 
than  in  the  utterances  of  Lincoln,  made 
without  a  thought  of  oratorical  effect, 
from  the  political  stump.  Before  the 

43 


LINCOLN   AND   SLAVERY 

encounter  with  Douglas,  he  was  a  man 
untried,  and  beyond  the  bounds  of  a 
single  state,  almost  unknown.  In  two 
years,  a  dozen  speeches  had  put  him  at 
the  head  of  the  nation.  There  were 
qualities  in  Lincoln's  words,  public  or 
private,  that  made  him  unforgettable. 
His  lips  dropped  apologues  and  apo 
thegms.  He  would  put  an  argument 
into  a  barbed  arrow  of  speech  that  went 
straight  to  its  mark  and  stuck  there.  His 
remorseless  logic  could  "  snake  a  soph 
ism  out  of  its  hole,"  as  John  Hay  said, 
with  a  deadly  certainty  of  which  no  other 
political  leader  of  his  time  was  capable. 
Take  from  the  speeches  against  the  ex 
tension  of  slavery  a  single  example  of  apt 
and  biting  illustration  that  forecloses 
all  debate:  — 

"If  I  saw  a  venomous  snake  crawling 
44 


LINCOLN   AND   SLAVERY 

in  the  road,  any  man  would  say  I  might 
seize  the  nearest  stick  and  kill  it;  but  if 
I  found  that  snake  in  bed  with  my  chil 
dren,  that  would  be  another  question. 
I  might  hurt  the  children  more  than 
the  snake.  Much  more,  if  I  found  it  in 
bed  with  my  neighbor's  children,  and  I 
had  bound  myself  by  a  solemn  compact 
not  to  meddle  with  his  children  under 
any  circumstances.  But  if  there  was  a 
bed  newly  made  up,  to  which  the  chil 
dren  were  to  be  taken,  and  it  was  pro 
posed  to  take  a  batch  of  snakes  and  put 
them  there  with  the  children,  I  take  it 
no  man  would  say  there  was  any  ques 
tion  how  I  ought  to  decide." 

He  demolished  the  whole  argument 
of  Douglas  in  a  couple  of  sententious 
phrases  that  could  not  be  answered  or 
dislodged  from  the  public  mind.  "Pop 
ular  sovereignty,"  he  said,  "means  that 
if  one  man  chooses  to  make  a  slave  of 
another  man,  neither  that  man  nor  any 
45 


LINCOLN   AND  SLAVERY 

other  man  shall  have  a  right  to  object." 
When  he  had  forced  from  Douglas  the 
opinion,  in  the  face  of  the  Dred  Scott 
case,  that  slavery  could  be  excluded 
from  the  territories,  he  summed  up  the 
position  in  a  dozen  words  that  made 
further  protestation  a  vain  beating  of 
the  air.  "Douglas  holds  that  slavery 
may  lawfully  be  driven  away  from  a 
place  where  it  has  a  lawful  right  to 
stay." 

Yet  no  arts  of  speech  or  genius  for 
debate  could  have  given  Lincoln  his 
primacy,  or  his  hold  upon  the  people, 
without  the  moral  power  and  depth  of 
conviction  revealed  in  the  lofty  utter 
ances  to  which  he  often  rose,  as  in  the 
letter  to  the  Boston  men  on  Jefferson's 
birthday:  — 

"He  who  would  be  no  slave  must 


LINCOLN   AND   SLAVERY 

consent  to  have  no  slave.  Those  who 
deny  freedom  to  others  deserve  it  not 
for  themselves,  and  under  a  just  God, 
cannot  long  retain  it." 

What  was  Lincoln's  attitude  and  pur 
pose  toward  slavery  as  he  approached 
the  presidency? 

This  was  a  question  of  deep  interest 
to  the  political  leaders,  as  they  saw  this 
untried  man  about  to  assume  the  exec 
utive  power  of  the  nation.  The  best 
source  of  authentic  information  was 
Herndon,  Lincoln's  law-partner,  him 
self  a  remarkable  character  and  closer 
to  Lincoln  for  many  years  than  any 
other.  To  the  inquiries  of  a  Massachu 
setts  senator,  Herndon  responded  with 
this  portrait,  now  of  historic  fidelity:  — 

"Lincoln  is  a  man  of  heart, — aye, 
as  gentle  as  a  woman's  and  as  tender,  — 

47 


LINCOLN   AND   SLAVERY 

but  he  has  a  will  strong  as  iron.  He 
loves  all  mankind,  hates  slavery  and 
every  form  of  despotism.  Put  these  to 
gether  —  love  for  the  slave,  and  a  de 
termination,  a  will,  that  justice,  strong 
and  unyielding,  shall  be  done  when 
he  has  the  right  to  act,  and  you  can 
form  your  own  conclusion.  Lincoln  will 
fail  here,  namely,  if  a  question  of  po 
litical  economy  —  if  any  question  comes 
up  which  is  doubtful,  questionable, 
which  no  man  can  demonstrate,  then 
his  friends  can  rule  him;  but  when  on 
Justice,  Right,  Liberty,  the  Government, 
the  Constitution,  and  the  Union,  then 
you  may  all  stand  aside  :  he  will  rule 
then,  and  no  man  can  move  him  —  no 
set  of  men  can  do  it.  This  is  Lincoln, 
and  you  mark  my  prediction." 

On  his  journey  to  the  Capital,  Lin 
coln  said  to  the  people  of  Philadelphia 
at  Independence  Hall:  — 

"I  have  never  had  a  feeling  politically 


LINCOLN   AND   SLAVERY 

that  did  not  spring  from  the  truths  em 
bodied  in  the  Declaration  of  Independ 
ence,  which  gave  liberty  not  alone  to 
this  country  but  to  the  world  in  all 
future  time.  If  the  country  cannot  be 
saved  without  giving  up  that  principle, 
I  would  rather  be  assassinated  on  the 
spot  than  surrender  it." 

These  words,  of  wide  currency  and 
often  misquoted  or  misunderstood,  are 
of  significance  enough  to  be  recalled  in 
their  true  meaning.  It  was  not  the  com 
mon  bathos,  of  which  Lincoln  was  in 
capable,  that  he  would  forfeit  his  life  to 
save  the  country.  He  would  be  assassi 
nated  rather  than  to  save  the  country  by 
surrendering  the  principle  of  liberty. 

No  more  appalling  vista  ever  met  the 
eye  of  ruler  or  statesman  than  opened 
before  Abraham  Lincoln  when  he  en- 

49 


LINCOLN   AND   SLAVERY 

tered  upon  the  presidency.  As  he  feel 
ingly  said,  "  Without  a  name,  perhaps 
without  a  reason  why  I  should  have  a 
name,  there  has  fallen  upon  me  a  task 
such  as  did  not  rest  even  upon  the 
Father  of  his  Country."  He  found  the 
government  crumbling  under  his  feet. 
The  South  was  already  in  arms,  and 
seven  states  had  repudiated  their  alle 
giance  to  the  Union.  In  his  own  words 
of  prophecy,  soon  fulfilled,  Freedom 
and  Slavery  could  no  longer  dwell  to 
gether,  and  the  house  divided  against 
itself  was  reeling  upon  its  foundations. 
In  this  hour  of  supreme  trial  did  Abra 
ham  Lincoln  forget  that  slavery  was 
wrecking  the  Union  which  he  was  now 
solemnly  sworn  to  preserve  ? 

As  well  might  he  forget  the  earth  on 
which  he  trod.    He  knew  that  behind 
5° 


LINCOLN   AND   SLAVERY 

the  mask  of  rebellion  was  no  face  but 
that  of  the  slave-power.  His  conviction 
was  proclaimed  and  known  that  slavery 
and  the  Union  could  not  survive  to 
gether,  and  it  was  now  his  charge  to 
save  the  Union.  He  saw  the  approach 
ing  doom  of  slavery  as  a  sacrifice  to  the 
Union.  In  the  interval  after  his  election, 
while  a  panic-stricken  Congress  was  on 
its  knees  before  Secession  and  the  peo 
ple  were  little  better,  he  had  been  urg 
ing  influential  leaders  to  "  hold  firm  as 
a  chain  of  steel "  against  further  com 
promise  with  slavery.  "Have  none  of 
it,"  he  says.  "The  tug  has  to  come, 
and  better  now  than  later."  He  insisted 
that  no  foot  of  free  soil  should  be 
thrown  as  a  sop  to  the  slave-power. 
"On  this,"  he  said,  "I  am  inflexible." 
He  rejected  the  imputation  that  he 


LINCOLN   AND   SLAVERY 

should  be  thought  "  willing  to  barter 
away  the  moral  principle  involved  in 
this  contest  for  the  commercial  gain  of 
a  new  submission  to  the  South."  Fore 
seeing  that  the  menace  of  war  would 
invite  or  impel  the  giving  of  new  bonds 
to  slavery,  he  privately  put  into  the 
hands  of  friends  in  Congress  a  series 
of  proposals  designed  to  forestall  the 
movement,  by  preventing  any  new  and 
substantial  concessions.  There  is  little 
doubt  that  his  influence,  if  not  his  hand, 
appears  in  the  constitutional  amend 
ment  adopted  by  Congress  on  the  eve 
of  his  inauguration,  an  historical  frag 
ment  which  disappeared  in  the  tumult 
of  war  and  is  now  forgotten.  For  the 
credit  of  the  nation,  this  deserves  to  be 
remembered  for  what  it  does  not  con 
tain.  Of  all  the  invitations  to  peace,  this 
52 


LINCOLN   AND   SLAVERY 

is  the  most  inconsequential.  It  was  de 
signed  to  write  into  the  Constitution 
the  accepted  dogma  that  Federal  power 
cannot  molest  slavery  within  the  states 
where  it  already  exists,  and  to  do  no 
more.  The  Dred  Scott  doctrine  is  nei 
ther  adopted  nor  recognized,  Congress 
is  left  as  free  as  it  was  before  to  forbid 
slavery  in  the  territories,  suppress  the 
interstate  slave-trade  or  repeal  the  fu 
gitive-slave  law,  and  the  same  power 
that  makes  the  amendment  can  unmake 
it  in  the  future.  There  is  recently  dis 
closed  evidence,  from  his  own  hand, 
confirming  the  belief  that  Lincoln's  un 
seen  interference  at  this  stage  was  a 
large,  perhaps  decisive,  factor  in  sav 
ing  the  nation  from  the  ignominy  of  the 
Crittenden  compromise  or  other  surren 
der  to  the  slave-power.  By  the  aid  of  his 
53 


LINCOLN   AND  SLAVERY 

influence  this  was  averted  and  slavery 
held  at  bay  to  meet  the  chances  of  war. 

The  clue  to  Lincoln's  course  toward 
slavery  as  president  is  long  open,  and 
there  is  no  higher  proof  of  his  wisdom 
or  courage.  He  had  now  exchanged 
the  freedom  of  political  debate  for  the 
responsibilities  of  power  and  constitu- 
tutional  obligation.  He  was  acting  a 
mighty  part  in  the  face  of  the  world. 
Every  word  must  be  weighed  and  every 
act  deliberated.  He  had  to  move  with 
caution  where  a  single  misstep  might 
be  fatal.  He  had  to  temporize,  and  there 
were  occasions  when  he  had  to  dis 
semble.  Appearing  weakest  where  he 
was  really  greatest,  he  was  misunder 
stood,  and  the  error  persists  in  the 
face  of  historyX 

54 


LINCOLN   AND   SLAVERY 

He  realized  in  the  beginning  that  all 
must  depend  upon  a  united  North.  The 
loyal  states  were  honeycombed  with 
the  timid  or  craven  and  the  open  sym 
pathizers  with  rebellion.  So  conspicu 
ous  a  personage  as  Franklin  Pierce  had 
written  the  rebel  leader  that  blood  would 
flow  in  our  own  streets  at  any  attempt 
to  coerce  the  South.  The  president  must 
steer  a  course  which  all  the  loyal  peo 
ple  would  follow,  or  the  cause  was 
hopeless.  What  might  appear  like  weak 
ness  under  other  conditions  was  now 
imperative  necessity.  He  could  lead 
only  while  appearing  to  follow.  In 
flexible  adherence  to  this  course  com 
pelled  him  to  do  or  forbear  much  that 
provoked  hostile  criticism  from  the  ex 
tremists  of  all  views.  Denounced  on 
the  one  hand  as  afraid  to  strike  at  slav- 
55 


LINCOLN   AND   SLAVERY 

ery,  and  on  the  other  as  waging  an  abo 
lition  war,  he  had  to  keep  the  peace 
with  Union  men  of  all  shades  of  opin 
ion,  that  they  might  be  held  together 
,  in  support  of  the  cause.  He  had  quali 
ties  that  were  equal  to  the  task.  The 
anti-slavery  radicals  scourged  him  with 
whips  and  the  pro-slavery  party  with 
scorpions,  and  he  submitted  in  silence 
and  without  complaint,  serenely  confi 
dent  in  his  purpose.   He  had  a  divine 
gift   of   patience,   a   "saving   common 
sense"  that  moved   by  one    step  at  a 
time,  and  a  courage  that  could  resist 
his  own  impulses  no  less  than  the  cla 
mor   of  factions.   With    supreme  self- 
control,  and  a  wisdom  that  seems  in 
spired,  he  kept  his  own  counsel  and 
awaited  his  time. 

All    this    is    now    familiar    history. 
56 


LINCOLN   AND   SLAVERY 

There  is  no  point  in  his  career  where 
Lincoln's  genius  as  a  leader  of  men 
rises  higher  or  marks  him  more  unmis 
takably  as  the  man  of  the  crisis,  and 
through  all  this  period  there  is  no  evi 
dence  that  his  hand  was  ever  stayed  by 
indecision  or  infirmity  of  purpose.  He 
was  moving  steadily,  in  his  own  way, 
to  the  extinction  of  slavery. 

From  the  first  note  he  struck,  in  his 
inaugural  address,  he  was  misunder 
stood  because  he  was  not  compre 
hended.  The  radical  anti-slavery  leaders 
thought  they  saw  a  disposition  to  further 
compromise,  the  men  of  fighting  blood 
a  want  of  courage  or  resolution.  They 
did  not  know  the  man.  The  address  was 
essentially  a  piece  of  political  strategy, 
of  the  highest  order,  in  which  Lincoln 
57 


LINCOLN   AND   SLAVERY 

met  the  occasion  with  the  far-sighted 
wisdom  that  was  peculiarly  his  own. 
He  could  not  but  foresee  that  his  appeal 
for  peace  was  addressed  to  deaf  ears 
and  would  be  rejected.  His  principal 
task  that  day  was  to  put  the  cause  of 
the  Union  in  the  right  and  Secession  in 
the  wrong,  before  the  country  and  the 
world,  at  the  threshold  of  the  impend 
ing  conflict,  and  this  he  did,  with  the 
hand  of  the  master. 

Of  the  two  mighty  problems  that 
confronted  Lincoln  in  dealing  with  the 
rebellion,  the  military  and  the  political, 
the  latter  was  more  complicated  and 
delicate  if  not  more  difficult,  and  of  this 
the  slavery  question  was  principally  a 
part.  Under  strict  official  responsibil 
ity  he  had  to  feel  his  way  through  a 

58 


LINCOLN   AND   SLAVERY 

maze  of  constitutional  doubts  and  dis 
putes  so  complex  that  it  was  never  un 
raveled.  He  would  have  been  politically 
justified  in  leaving  slavery  to  the  course 
and  chance  of  events.  As  president,  he 
had  no  civil  power  over  it.  As  com- 
mander-in-chief  of  the  armed  forces,  he 
could  lay  hands  upon  it  only  as  a  neces 
sary  act  of  war  if  emancipation  should 
become  essential  to  military  success. 
His  right  to  interfere  with  slavery  at 
all  was  challenged  and  disputed.  So 
pronounced  an  anti-slavery  man  as 
Seward,  the  head  of  his  cabinet,  was 
afraid  of  it,  and  advised  him  to  leave  it 
alone.  He  was  loudly  warned  from  the 
North  to  leave  it  alone.  Lincoln  neither 
hesitated  nor  delayed.  No  sooner  were 
the  necessary  military  operations  on  foot 
than  he  began  to  formulate  plans  to- 

59 


LINCOLN   AND   SLAVERY 

ward  the  extinction  of  slavery.  In  the 
District  of  Columbia,  within  the  con 
trol  of  Congress,  the  way  was  plain. 
Far  more  important  than  this  were  the 
border  slave  states,  wavering  between 
loyalty  and  treason  but  still  remaining 
in  the  Union.  That  it  was  vitally  neces 
sary  to  keep  them  there  Lincoln  be 
lieved  and  all  men  agreed.  They  were 
no  less  devoted  to  slavery,  as  the  event 
proved,  than  the  states  already  in  rebel 
lion.  Nevertheless,  Lincoln  proceeded 
to  urge  upon  them  a  scheme  of  com- 
\J  pensatedjlbolition,  which  he  never  for 
bore  while  any  hope  of  success  remained, 
pleading  with  them  like  a  father  with 
his  children,  with  many  significant  in 
timations  that  compulsory  emancipation 
might  be  the  consequence  of  refusal. 
It  was  to  no  purpose.  Their  attachment 
60 


LINCOLN   AND   SLAVERY 

to  slavery  was  so  strong  that  they  would 
not  give  it  up.  In  April,  1862,  this 
measure  was  indorsed  by  Congress,  but 
events  were  then  moving  too  swiftly 
and  compensated  abolition  was  left  be 
hind. 

Written  history  has  strangely  missed 
the  true  significance  of  this  episode. 
Anxious  as  Lincoln  was  to  hold  the 
allegiance  of  the  border  states,  why 
should  he  go  aside  to  press  upon  them 
an  unpalatable  scheme  of  abolition,  at 
the  risk  of  stimulating  their  natural 
sympathy  with  the  other  slave  states  to 
a  degree  that  might  imperil  their  ad 
herence  to  the  Union? 

The  question  admits  of  but  one  an 
swer.  Profoundly  convinced  that  slav 
ery  and  the  Union  could  not  survive 
together,  Lincoln  realized  from  the  be- 
61 


LINCOLN   AND   SLAVERY 

ginning  that  the  extinction  of  slavery 
was  as  necessary  to  a  restored  Union 
as  the  winning  of  battles.  His  appeal 
to  the  border  states,  charged  against 
him  as  temporizing  with  slavery,  is  the 
first  open  and  unmistakable  evidence  of 
his  purpose  to  make  an  end  of  it.  He 
began  in  the  localities  where  it  could 
be  reached  by  peaceful  means,  clearly 
£~  within  his  power.  To  treat  with  these 
states  for  voluntary  abolition  would  not 
divide  or  imperil  the  North.  If  he  suc 
ceeded,  he  would  divide  the  South,  ex 
tinguish  slavery  in  a  third  of  its  domain, 
and  fatally  undermine  the  whole  sys 
tem.  If  he  failed,  the  failure  would  go 
to  justify  compulsory  emancipation. 
This  is  the  indisputable  meaning  of  his 
conduct,  confirmed,  as  we  shall  see,  by 
the  testimony  of  his  own  words. 
62 


LINCOLN   AND  SLAVERY 

Lincoln's  interference  with  military 
commanders  in  dealing  with  escaped 
slaves,  his  "revocation,"  as  it  is  still 
called,  of  Fremont's  proclamation  of  Au 
gust  30, 1861,  the  recalling  of  Cameron's 
report  of  December,  i86i,on  the  arming 
of  the  black  refugees,  and  the  annulling 
of  Hunter's  order  of  May,  1862,  brought 
upon  him  a  storm  of  hostile  criticism. 
In  each  case  he  took  the  only  proper 
course,  for  which  he  had  the  unanswer 
able  reasons.  The  military  power  over 
slavery  was  still  in  dispute,  the  military 
necessity  on  which  it  must  stand  was 
not  established, — and  this  Lincoln  after 
ward  declared  to  be  his  principal  reason 
for  delay, — the  people  were  not  yet  pre 
pared  for  emancipation,  as  the  event 
proved,  and  a  subject  involving  such 
vast  political  consequences  belonged  to 
63 


LINCOLN   AND   SLAVERY 

the  head  of  the  government  and  not  to 
generals   in    the   field.  There   must  be 
one  uniform  policy,  for  the  army  and 
the  country.   He  did  not  revoke  Fre 
mont's  proclamation,  but  modified  it  to 
conform  to  the  Confiscation  Act.  In  re 
voking    Hunter's    order    he    pointedly 
declares  that  he  "reserves  to  himself" 
the  question  of  military  emancipation, 
and  here  again  he  appeals  to  the  border 
states  to  abolish  slavery  under  the  Com 
pensation  Act,  with  a  direct  admoni 
tion  to  heed  "the  signs  of  the  times." 
He  warned  Congress  and  the  country 
in  his  message  of  December,  1861,  and 
elsewhere,  in  words    of   unmistakable 
import,  that  "all  indispensable  means" 
must  be  employed  to  preserve  the  Union. 
Inthelightofwhatfollowed,itisplainthat 
he  was  pointing  toward  emancipation. 


LINCOLN   AND   SLAVERY 

For  all  his  shortcomings,  as  they 
were  regarded,  and  especially  for  his 
delay  in  striking  at  slavery  with  the 
sword  of  military  power,  the  impatient 
but  undiscerning  radicals  poured  out 
the  vials  of  their  wrath  upon  him,  and 
multiplied  the  troubles  to  which  only 
infinite  patience  could  submit.  His  acts 
and  omissions  were  public.  As  every 
word  he  spoke  was  heard  by  the  enemy, 
North  and  South,  his  motives  and  pur-, 
poses  could  not  be  disclosed.  Conduct 
born  of  a  wisdom  superior  to  their  own 
was  ascribed  to  reluctance  or  irresolu 
tion  by  a  people  who  had  not  found 
him  out.  He  told  the  cabinet  one  day 
a  story  of  a  man  who  always  pretended 
to  be  insane  when  beset  by  his  cred 
itors,  and  significantly  said,  "  On  more 
than  one  occasion  I  have  been  com- 

65 


LINCOLN   AND   SLAVERY 

pelled  to  appear  mad."  It  is  one  of  the 
oddities  of  this  singular  career  that  the 
only  scar  borne  upon  the  person  of 
the  Emancipator  was  at  the  hand  of  a 
negro  and  the  only  lasting  impeachment 
of  his  character  the  work  of  the  most 
zealous  opponents  of  slavery. 

The  impatient  temper  of  Horace 
Greeley  could  not  await  the  cautious 
but  sure-footed  steps  of  the  great  presi 
dent  toward  the  freeing  of  the  slaves. 
His  "Prayer  of  Twenty  Millions,"  in 
the  Tribune,  drew  from  the  president 
a  public  reply,  under  date  of  August 
22,  1862,  in  which  appears  the  much- 
quoted,  misunderstood,  and  perverted 
declaration,  "  If  I  could  save  the  Union 
without  freeing  any  slave,  I  would  do 
it."  Of  all  the  supposed  evidences  of 
66 


LINCOLN   AND  SLAVERY 

Lincoln's  willingness  to  save  slavery, 

V\  j)6»" 

this  is  the  most  persistent,  and  in  the 
light  of  events,  the  least  significant.  If 
it  ever  afforded  any  justification  for 
such  a  view  of  Lincoln,  it  was  but  for 
a  day. 

It  has  long  been  known  that  Lin 
coln's  purpose  of  emancipation  became 
a  fixed  resolve  not  later  than  July, 
1862.  As  early  as  June  18  he  had 
privately  read  to  the  vice-president 
what  is  supposed  to  have  been  the  first 
sketch  of  the  Proclamation,  and  about 
the  same  time  this  was  shown  to  an 
other  confidential  friend.  On  the  vessel 
returning  from  Hampton  Roads,  July 
10,  he  was  at  work  upon  this  or  another 
draft.  Two  days  later  he  urged  his  last 
appeal  upon  the  border-state  men  to 
abolish  slavery  with  compensation,  but 

67 


LINCOLN   AND   SLAVERY 

in  vain.  The  situation  was  now  vastly 
different  from  that  of  the  previous  year. 
In  the  lurid  light  of  war,  the  dullest  eye 
was  beginning  to  see  that  slavery  was 
the  backbone  of  the  rebellion.  Every 
soldier's  grave  was  a  new  testimony 
against  it.  The  swift  movement  of  events 
furnished  proof  that  the  public  feeling 
against  slavery  had  risen  from  day  to 
day.  In  one  of  the  early  speeches  Lin 
coln  had  prefigured  the  peaceful  ex 
tinction  of  slavery  as  the  task,  perhaps, 
of  a  hundred  years,  but  now  a  year  of 
war  had  done  the  work  of  a  century. 
In  this  interval  the  black  republics  of 
Hayti  and  Liberia  were  recognized,  a 
treaty  concluded  with  Great  Britain  for 
effectual  suppression  of  the  slave  trade 
-which  Seward  declared  to  be  "the 
great  act  of  this  administration" — Con- 
68 


LINCOLN   AND   SLAVERY 

gress  had  abolished  slavery  in  the  Dis 
trict  of  Columbia,  excluded  it  from  the 
territories  in  the  face  of  the  Dred  Scott 
doctrine,  thus  finally  disposed  of,  prac 
tically  annulled  the  fugitive-slave  law 
and  superseded  the  unwieldy  Confisca 
tion  Act  of  1 86 1  by  declaring  escaped 
slaves  free  as  captives  of  war  and  eligi 
ble  for  military  service.  The  popular 
approval  of  these  measures  seemed  to 
warrant  the  president  in  believing  that 
the  people  would  now  accept  a  general 
emancipation.  McClellan  warned  him 
that  an  abolition  policy  would  disinte 
grate  the  armies  in  the  field,  but  he 
passed  this  admonition  without  notice. 
On  July  13  he  privately  disclosed  to 
Seward  and  Welles  his  purpose  to  de 
cree  emancipation.  To  the  assembled 
cabinet,  on  July  22,  he  presented  the  pre- 


LINCOLN   AND   SLAVERY 

liminary  proclamation,  declaring  that 
he  did  not  seek  their  advice  upon  eman 
cipation,  as  he  was  resolved  upon  it, 
but  only  suggestions  of  form  or  detail. 
Evidently  he  was  prepared  to  issue  the 
proclamation  at  once.  The  cabinet  fa 
vored  Seward's  suggestion  to  wait  for  a 
military  success,  when  the  edict  might 
go  out  upon  a  wave  of  popular  enthu 
siasm.  The  president  concurred,  and 
this  delayed  its  issue  until  the  repulse 
of  Lee  at  Antietam. 

The  truth,  then,  is  that  at  the  mo 
ment  when  Lincoln  penned  the  letter 
to  Greeley,  August  22,  he  was  with 
holding,  in  deference  to  his  advisers, 
the  settled  decree  of  emancipation,  wait 
ing  only  for  the  wings  of  victory  on 
which  a  month  later  it  went  forth  to 
the  world. 


LINCOLN   AND   SLAVERY 

Remarkable  as  Lincoln  was  for  tak 
ing  the  people  into  his  confidence  when 
he  could,  he  was  always  able,  through 
good  and  evil  report,  to  keep  his  own 
counsel  when  he  must.  Later  than  the 
Greeley  letter,  and  but  a  week  before 
the  proclamation  appeared,  a  delega 
tion  of  clergymen  came  to  urge  imme 
diate  emancipation.  He  submitted  to 
their  reproaches,  giving  no  hint  of  the 
true  situation,  and  indeed  suggesting 
obstacles  in  the  way  of  their  desire. 
The  disappointed  friends  of  freedom 
returned  home  to  meet  the  proclama 
tion  in  the  newspapers. 

Those  who  point  to  the  Greeley  let 
ter,  or  other  fancied  evidences  that 
Lincoln  was  willing  to  save  slavery, 
are  ignorant  of  the  historical  facts  or 
too  little  to  comprehend  them.  The 


LINCOLN   AND   SLAVERY 

letter  is  but  another  proof  of  Lincoln's 
genius  for  managing  men  and  events. 
Already  resolved  upon  emancipation, 
for  which  he  must  have  the  people  with 
him,  he  seized  the  occasion  of  Gree- 
ley's  protest  to  make  a  public  declara 
tion  which  would  help  to  disarm  the 
conservatives  of  the  North  against  the 
policy  of  freedom  which  he  was  about 
to  proclaim,  as  he  had  disarmed  the 
border  states  against  it  by  the  offer  of 
compensation.  It  was  pure  hypothesis 
to  say  that  he  would  save  the  Union  if 
he  could  without  freeing  a  slave.  With 
equal  truth,  and  as  little  significance,  he 
might  have  said  that  he  would  save  the 
Union  if  he  could  without  sacrificing  a 
man  in  battle.  Thousands  of  slaves  were 
already  freed,  by  course  of  war,  as  thou 
sands  of  men  were  fallen  in  the  field. 
72 


LINCOLN   AND   SLAVERY 

We  know  that  Lincoln  realized  from 
the  beginning  the  futility  of  trying  to 
save  the  Union  with  slavery,  and  he 
knew,  when  he  wrote  the  Greeley  let 
ter,  that  he  was  about  to  proclaim  eman 
cipation.  In  the  light  of  these  facts, 
the  letter  can  bear  no  other  meaning 
than  that  which  obviously  it  bore  to 
Lincoln  himself.  In  the  letter  to  Robin 
son,  of 'August,  1864,  he  says:  — 

"  It  is  true,  as  you  remind  me,  that  in 
the  Greeley  letter  of  1862  I  said:  '  If  I 
could  save  the  Union  without  freeing 
any  slave,  I  would  do  it.V-  •  •  I  con 
tinued  in  the  same  letter:  'What  I  do 
about  slavery  and  the  colored  race  I  do 
because  I  believe  it  helps  to  save  the 
Union;  and  what  I  forbear,  I  forbear 
because  I  do  not  believe  it  would  help 
to  save  the  Union.  I  shall  do  less  when 
ever  I  shall  believe  what  I  am  doing 
hurts  the  cause;  and  I  shall  do  more 
73 


LINCOLN   AND   SLAVERY 

whenever  I  shall  believe  doing  more 
will  help  the  cause.'  .  .  .  When  I  after 
ward  proclaimed  emancipation  and  em 
ployed  colored  soldiers,  I  only  followed 
the  declaration  just  quoted  from  the 
Greeley  letter  that  'I  shall  do  more 
whenever  I  shall  believe  doing  more 
will  help  the  cause.'" 


Pending  the  final  act  of  emancipa 
tion,  the  president  submitted  to  Con 
gress  a  plan  of  constitutional  abolition, 
immediately  securing  the  freedom  of 
all  slaves  emancipated  by  the  events  of 
war,  and  authorizing  a  national  sub 
sidy,  with  compensation  to  loyal  own 
ers,  upon  voluntary  abolition  by  the 
states.  "Without  slavery  the  rebellion 
could  never  have  existed  —  without 
slavery  it  could  not  continue."  This  is 
the  text  of  a  full  discussion  of  the  sub- 
74 


LINCOLN   AND   SLAVERY 

ject  "  in  its  economical  aspect,"  rising 
at  the  close  to  these  words  of  eloquent 
entreaty:  — 

"The  fiery  trial  through  which  we 
pass  will  light  us  down,  in  honor  or 
dishonor,  to  the  latest  generation.  We 
say  we  are  for  the  Union.  The  world 
will  not  forget  that  we  say  this.  We 
know  how  to  save  the  Union.  The 
world  knows  that  we  know  how  to  save 
it.  We  —  even  we  here  —  hold  the 
power  and  bear  the  responsibility.  In 
giving  freedom  to  the  slave  we  assure 
freedom  to  the  free  —  honorable  alike 
in  what  we  give  and  what  we  preserve. 
We  shall  nobly  save  or  meanly  lose  the 
last  best  hope  of  earth.  Other  means 
may  succeed;  this  could  not  fail.  The 
way  is  plain,  peaceful,  generous,  just- 
a  way  which,  if  followed,  the  world  will 
forever  applaud  and  God  must  forever 
bless." 


75 


LINCOLN  AND   SLAVERY 

Lincoln  already  saw  what  his  im 
patient  critics  had  not  yet  perceived, 
that  the  extinction  of  slavery  could  be 
made  final  and  complete  only  by  writ 
ing  it  into  the  Federal  Constitution. 
The  Proclamation  would  free  the  slaves 
to  the  extent  of  military  power,  but  it 
could  not  make  slavery  unlawful  in  a 
single  state.  To  accomplish  this  end, 
and  possibly  hasten  the  return  of  peace, 
he  would  subsidize  voluntary  abolition, 
and  temper  the  blow  to  slaveholders 
who  adhered  to  the  Union.  But  popular 
excitement,  fed  by  the  preliminary  proc 
lamation,  was  now  running  too  high  for 
this.  Nothing  followed  from  his  appeal 
but  fresh  denunciation  of  the  compensa 
tion  scheme,  by  fiery  spirits  who  would 
risk  the  freedom  of  the  slave  rather  than 
pay  ransom  for  his  deliverance. 


LINCOLN  AND  SLAVERY 

At  the  day  appointed  for  the  final 
act,  the  president  was  ready.  It  was  not 
an  auspicious  time.  The  proclamation 
of  September,  welcomed  with  shouts 
of  acclaim  by  the  abolitionists  and  by 
some  of  the  enfranchised  race,  was  so 
coldly  received  by  the  country  that  the 
great  states  had^turned  against  the  presi 
dent  in  the  ensuing  elections.  It  was 
yet  doubtful  whether  the  people  were 
equal  to  the  policy  of  freedom,  and  our 
arms  were  now  under  the  shadow  of  a 
bloody  defeat.  Clouds  and  darkness 
were  before  him,  but  the  die  was  cast 
and  Lincoln  could  not  hesitate.  The 
final  decree  went  forth  in  the  Emanci 
pation  Proclamation  of  January  i,  1863, 
making  the  day  forever  illustrious  in 
the  annals  of  mankind.  The  new  birth 
of  the  American  nation  into  real  free- 
77 


LINCOLN   AND   SLAVERY 

dom  marked  the  final  disappearance 
of  chattel  slavery  from  the  Christian 
world. 

Whatever  were  the  limitations  upon 
the  legal  operation  or  effect  of  the 
proclamation,  Lincoln  believed  it  to  be, 
as  history  has  pronounced  it,  the  death 
blow  of  slavery.  From  this  time  he 
stood  to  it  firmly  as  an  act  accomplished, 
making  its  full  observance  a  condition 
of  every  future  step  toward  peace. 
Throughout  the  critical  years  of  battle 
that  followed,  he  rejected  with  indig 
nant  scorn  all  intimations  that  slavery 
might  yet  be  rehabilitated.  "  There  have 
been  men  base  enough,"  he  said,  "to 
propose  to  me  to  return  to  slavery  our 
black  warriors  of  Port  Hudson  and 
Olustee.  Should  I  do  so,  I  should  de 
serve  to  be  damned  in  time  and  eternity." 


LINCOLN   AND   SLAVERY 

When  the  question  of  his  renomination 
came  on,  he  characteristically  said,  "It 
won't  make  much  difference  who  is 
president  if  pledged  to  emancipation 
and  negro  soldiers."  The  appalling 
slaughter  of  the  1864  campaigns  brought 
on  a  peace  movement,  with  intimations 
that  slavery  might  be  restored,  upon 
which  the  president,  then  reflected  for 
a  second  term,  shuts  the  book  in  his  last 
message  to  Congress  with  these  de 
cisive  words:  — 

"I  repeat  the  declaration  made  a 
year  ago,  that  while  I  remain  in  my 
present  position  I  shall  not  attempt  to 
retract  or  modify  the  Emancipation 
Proclamation,  nor  shall  I  return  to  slav 
ery  any  person  who  is  free  by  the  terms 
of  that  proclamation  or  by  any  of  the 
Acts  of  Congress.  If  the  people  should, 
by  whatever  mode  or  means,  make  it 

79 


LINCOLN   AND  SLAVERY 

an  executive  duty  to  reenslave  such 
persons,  another,  and  not  I,  must  be 
their  instrument  to  perform  it." 

In  the  letter  to  Hodges,  of  April, 
1864,  an  historical  document  of  the  first 
importance,  Lincoln  has  left  a  record 
of  the  mental  process  by  which  he 
reached  emancipation.  He  always  felt 
the  wrong  of  slavery,  he  says,  but  — 

"  I  understood  that  in  ordinary  civil 
administration  my  oath  forbade  me  to 
practically  indulge  my  primary  abstract 
judgment  on  the  moral  question  of 
slavery.  .  .  .  And  I  aver  that  to  this 
day  I  have  done  no  official  act  in  mere 
deference  to  my  abstract  judgment  and 
feeling  on  slavery.  I  did  understand, 
however,  that  my  oath  to  preserve  the 
Constitution  imposed  upon  me  the  duty 
to  preserve,  by  every  indispensable 
means,  that  government,  that  nation,  of 

80 


LINCOLN   AND   SLAVERY 

which  the  Constitution  was  the  organic 
law.  ...  I  felt  that  measures  other 
wise  unconstitutional  might  become 
lawful  by  becoming  indispensable  to 
the  preservation  of  the  Constitution 
through  the  preservation  of  the  nation. 
Right  or  wrong,  I  assumed  this  ground 
and  now  avow  it  ...  When  in  March 
and  May  and  July,  1862,  I  made  earnest 
and  successive  appeals  to  the  border 
states  to  favor  compensated  emancipa- 
pation,  I  believed  the  indispensable  ne 
cessity  for  military  emancipation  and 
arming  the  blacks  would  come  unless 
averted  by  that  measure.  ...  In  tell 
ing  this  tale  I  attempt  no  compli 
ment  to  my  own  sagacity.  I  claim  not 
to  have  controlled  events,  but  con 
fess  plainly  that  events  have  controlled 
me." 

There  is  some  of  Lincoln's  character 
istic    self-effacement   in   this,   but   the 
meaning  is  plain.   If   it  adds  little  to 
81 


LINCOLN   AND   SLAVERY 

what  a  discerning  eye  can  read  from 
the  course  of  his  conduct,  it  is  his  own 
testimony.  Restrained  by  imperative 
official  obligations,  he  is  still  looking 
for  ground  on  which  to  stand  in  over 
throwing  slavery.  Indispensable  mili 
tary  necessity  is  such  a  ground.  With 
out  waiting  for  military  necessity,  he 
tries  to  begin  the  process  of  extermina 
tion  by  negotiating  for  voluntary  aboli 
tion  in  the  border  states.  When  this 
attempt  fails,  he  accepts  the  result  as 
establishing  military  necessity,  and  is 
sues  the  Proclamation. 

The  military  necessity  was  strenu 
ously  denied  at  the  time.  Indeed,  a 
numerous  party  maintained  to  the  end 
that  the  whole  proceeding  was  an  un 
warranted  and  unlawful  usurpation  of 
power.  As  a  purely  military  question, 
82 


LINCOLN   AND   SLAVERY 

it  probably  must  be  conceded  that  no 
compelling  military  necessity  for  eman 
cipation  was  then,  if  it  was  ever,  estab 
lished.  Upon  the  degree  of  necessity 
Lincoln  had  the  right  to  exercise  his 
own  judgment,  and  he  cast  it  in  favor 
of  liberty.  If  he  was  controlled  by 
events,  they  were  events  which  his  own 
hand  had  helped  to  set  in  motion. 

The  germ  of  the  Emancipation  Proc 
lamation  was  in  the  "  divided  house " 
speech  of  1858.  That  bold  and  startling 
utterance  had  a  far-reaching  influence 
upon  Lincoln's  career,  and  upon  the 
course  of  history.  If  the  slave-power  had 
any  pretext  for  secession  or  the  appeal 
to  arms  in  1861,  it  was  that  Lincoln,  as 
a  political  leader,  had  changed  the  front 
of  the  victorious  party  toward  slavery 

83 


LINCOLN   AND   SLAVERY 

from  passive  toleration  to  open  hostility, 
and  put  the  North  in  an  attitude  that 
not  only  made  any  further  extension  of 
slavery  impossible,  but  fairly  endan 
gered  its  permanent  existence  in  the 
states.  Seeing  the  full  import  of  the 
Dred  Scott  doctrine  if  accepted  as  a  rule 
of  political  action,  Lincoln  had  warned 
the  people,  with  prophetic  insight  and 
solemnity,  that  the  nation  must  become 
all  slave  or  all  free.  The  warning  went 
home,  and  the  people  had  called  the 
prophet  to  the  chair  of  state.  The  slave- 
power  read  the  omen,  and  saw  with  the 
swift  instinct  of  self-preservation,  what 
Lincoln  himself  must  have  anticipated, 
that  the  seed  now  sown  would  bear  fruit 
of  an  irresistible  political  movement,  in 
some  form,  toward  the  extinction  of 
slavery.  The  system  was  now  besieged 


LINCOLN   AND   SLAVERY 

in  its  own  house.  There  might  have 
been  a  capitulation  on  terms  that  would 
not  involve  bloodshed  or  ruin,  but  the 
slave-power  threw  away  its  opportunity. 
Under  the  Constitution,  the  peaceful 
extinction  of  slavery  could  be  accom 
plished  only  by  shutting  it  up  in  the 
states  and  leaving  it  to  a  lingering  death 
by  natural  decay,  hastened,  perhaps,  by 
suppression  of  the  interstate  slave-trade 
and  repeal  of  the  fugitive-slave  law, 
or  by  persuading  the  South  to  accept 
compensated  abolition.  The  slave- 
power,  blind  with  passion,  did  not  see 
that  armed  rebellion  would  put  in  Lin 
coln's  hand  the  sword  by  which  slavery 
could  be  destroyed  at  one  stroke  as  a 
necessary  act  of  war.  And  so  it  was 
done. 


LINCOLN   AND   SLAVERY 

By  Lincoln's  procurement,  the  Thir 
teenth  Amendment  was  made  the  fea 
ture  of  the  party  convention  and  plat 
form  of  1864.  Under  this  impetus,  and 
the  urgent  appeal  of  his  last  message  to 
Congress,  it  finally  passed  that  body 
January  31,  1865.  It  is  known  that  he 
exhausted  his  personal  influence,  and  he 
was  charged  with  straining  his  official 
power,  to  insure  its  success.  There  is 
some  authority  for  the  story,  not  inca 
pable  of  belief,  that  when  the  Amend 
ment  was  stalled  irrthe  House,  the  pres 
ident  sent  for  a  friendly  leader  and 
said  to  him,  "  The  amendment  must  be 
passed.  In  this  office  I  have  great  power. 
The  amendment  must  be  passed.  Say 
no  more,  but  go  and  pass  it."  A  jubilant 
crowd  came  to  serenade  him  at  the 
White  House  upon  the  event.  "This  is 
86 


LINCOLN   AND   SLAVERY 

the  king's  cure,"  he  said,  "  for  all  the 
evils.  It  winds  the  whole  thing  up." 
The  doom  of  slavery  was  sealed,  but  the 
war  was  not  over,  nor  the  Union  re 
stored.  A  few  days  later,  upon  his 
return  from  the  conference  at  Hamp 
ton  Roads,  Lincoln  again  attempted  a 
shorter  step  toward  peace  with  univer 
sal  emancipation,  in  a  plan  presented  to 
the  cabinet  for  a  subsidy  to  all  the  slave 
states  upon  submission  to  the  national 
authority  and  ratification  of  the  Amend 
ment.  To  his  open  disappointment,*this 
met  with  no  favor.  It  included  a  gen 
eral  pardon  to  rebellion,  which  few  but 
Lincoln  himself  would  have  favored  at 
that  stage,  and  bore  an  appearance  of 
purchasing  the  peace  now  soon  to  be 
conquered.  Whatever  may  be  thought 
of  this  magnanimous  proposal,  the  evi- 


LINCOLN   AND   SLAVERY 

dence  remains  that  peace  and  the  com 
plete  extinction  of  slavery  were  alike 
the  objects  foremost  in  his  mind.  The 
title  of  Lincoln  as  the  Emancipator  rests 
no  more  upon  the  Proclamation  than 
upon  his  fixed  resolve  to  write  univer 
sal  freedom  into  the  Federal  Constitu 
tion  on  the  crest  of  the  wave  of  public 
sentiment,  before  it  could  recede  and 
leave  the  Amendment  stranded. 

Nothing  in  Abraham  Lincoln's  his 
tory  stands  out  more  plainly  than  the 
compelling  motive  of  his  public  career. 
It  was  antipathy  to  slavery.  This  brought 
him  out  of  retirement,  at  the  threat  to 
enslave  the  Nebraska  territory,  and 
devoted  him  to  the  cause  from  which 
he  was  never  permitted  to  look  back. 
To  no  abolitionist  was  slavery  more 
88 


LINCOLN   AND   SLAVERY 

abhorrent  than  it  was  to  Lincoln,  not 
only  for  its  iniquity,  but  because  it  en 
dangered  the  Union.  The  Constitution, 
which  Garrison's  inspired  wrath  de 
nounced  in  fhe  fiery  words  of  Isaiah  as 
"  a  covenant  with  death  and  agreement 
with  hell,"  Lincoln  accepted,  with  all 
its  obligations.  The  abolitionists,  whose 
appeal  was  addressed  only  to  the  public 
conscience,  had  no  direct  and  practical 
remedy  for  the  national  evil.  Lincoln, 
at  once  a  moralist,  a  profound  and  far- 
sighted  politician  and  statesman,  and  a 
lover  of  the  Union,  looked  for  a  remedy 
and  saw  that  there  could  be  but  one. 
Slavery  must  be  put  on  the  way  to  its 
end,  by  means  consistent  with  the  Con 
stitution  and  the  Union.  The  first  step 
was  to  arrest  its  expansion;  the  next,  to 
prepare  the  public  mind  for  ultimate 


LINCOLN   AND   SLAVERY 

extinction,  on  the  principle  that  a  nation 
cannot  endure  half  slave  and  half  free. 
Thus  far  had  he  advanced  when  the 
power  that  rules  over  men  and  nations 
opened  a  shorter  way.  Every  fact  of 
his  history  points  to  the  belief  that,  but 
for  the  intervention  of  secession  and 
war,  he  would  have  followed  with  a 
national  scheme  of  compensated  aboli 
tion.  Historical  monuments  that  cannot 
be  effaced  mark  the  line  on  which  he 
moved  from  1854  to  the  end  of  his  life. 
Lincoln  hated  slavery.  He  saw  and  pro 
claimed  that  slavery  must  destroy  the 
Union  or  be  itself  destroyed.  He  was 
devoted  to  the  Union.  Slavery  made 
war  upon  the  Union.  The  destiny  that 
charged  him  with  the  task  of  saving  the 
Union  armed  him  with  the  power  to  de 
stroy  slavery,  and  at  his  hand  slavery 
90 


LINCOLN  AND  SLAVERY 

met  the  fatal  blow.  It  is  idle  to  specu 
late  upon  what  he  might  have  done. 
The  world  knows  what  he  did,  and  it 
appears  as  if  foreordained  and  inevit 
able. 

The  perspective  of  half  a  century  af 
fords  a  view  of  this  great  character  un 
seen  by  his  contemporaries.  Historical 
research  has  revealed  and  is  still  reveal 
ing  much  that  was  unknown  to  them. 
Cautious  and  deliberate,  but  sublimely 
confident  in  himself  and  inflexible  when 
resolved,  he  would  brook  no  interfer 
ence  with  his  purposes.  Not  that  he 
would  take  to  himself  the  glory  —  noth 
ing  is  more  foreign  to  his  character 
than  this — but  he  felt  that  he  could 
reach  the  end  in  his  own  way,  and  he 
was  not  sure  of  any  other  way.  The 
springs  of  history,  disturbed  at  their 
91 


LINCOLN   AND   SLAVERY 

source  by  ignorant  or  undiscerning  crit 
icism  that  measured  this  great  man  by 
its  own  imperfect  standards,  will  yet  run 
clear.  The  conception  of  Lincoln  as 
hesitating  and  reluctant  before  emanci 
pation  would  be  impossible  if  he  had 
launched  the  Proclamation  in  1861  in 
stead  of  1862.  It  is  possible  only  because 
he  would  not  be  forced  by  public  clamor 
to  act  before  the  time  was  ripe.  To  this 
single  feature  of  his  conduct,  in  the  last 
analysis,  must  be  ascribed  the  historical 
myopia  that  would  regard  Lincoln  as 
willing  to  save  slavery. 

They  have  studied  Abraham  Lincoln 
to  little  purpose  who  see  in  the  supreme 
act  of  his  life  any  motive  less  lofty  than 
the  act  itself.  To  the  eye  of  the  devout, 
the  hand  of  God  was  in  it  and  the  man 
divinely  appointed  to  the  work.  More 
92 


LINCOLN   AND   SLAVERY 

than  one  incident  of  this  unique  career 
suggests,  with  almost  compelling  force, 
the  direct  intervention  of  an  overruling 
power.  There  is  much  in  Lincoln's 
character  that  seems  inscrutable.  The 
occult  and  mystic  temperament,  the 
prompting  voice  within  him,  the  dis 
traught  moods,  the  saturating  melan 
choly,  the  recurring  dream,  the  premo 
nitions  of  violent  death,  the  minor  key 
in  which  his  whole  life  was  attuned, 
relieved  only  by  the  unfailing  strain  of 
humor, — these  are  not  idle  tales  but  es 
tablished  facts.  He  avowed  that  he  was 
superstitious,  but  he  was  incapable  of 
hypocrisy  and  made  no  affectation  of  re 
ligion.  Was  there  a  direct  light,  supe 
rior  to  human  wisdom,  on  the  path  of 
this  remarkable  man?  Hear  him  speak 
for  himself:  — 

93 


LINCOLN   AND   SLAVERY 

"That  the  Almighty  does  make  use 
of  human  agencies  and  directly  inter 
venes  in  human  affairs  is  one  of  the 
plainest  statements  of  the  Bible.  I  have 
had  so  many  evidences  of  his  direction, 
so  many  instances  when  I  have  been 
controlled  by  some  other  power  than 
my  own  will,  that  I  cannot  doubt  that 
this  power  comes  from  above.  I  fre 
quently  see  my  way  clear  to  a  decision 
when  I  am  conscious  that  I  have  no  suffi 
cient  facts  upon  which  to  found  it.  ... 
I  am  satisfied  that  when  the  Almighty 
wants  me  to  do  or  not  to  do  a  particular 
thing,  he  finds  a  way  of  letting  me 
know  it." 

This  declaration  reflects  a  peculiar 
significance  upon  the  words  with  which 
he  laid  the  Proclamation  before  his  offi 
cial  council.  "God  has  decided  the 
question,  in  favor  of  the  slaves." 

The    psychology   of  Abraham   Lin 
coln,  with  all  his  practical  and  homely 
94 


LINCOLN   AND  SLAVERY 

traits  preeminently  a  man  of  the  spirit, 
is  unexplored.  It  would  task  philosophy 
or  science  to  fathom  the  depths  and 
trace  the  conflicting  currents  of  this 
phenomenal  character.  Yet  of  all  his 
toric  personages  he  least  can  be  under 
stood  without  looking  into  his  soul.  A 
man  of  complete  sincerity,  the  motives 
of  his  life  are  written  there,  and  there 
they  must  be  read.  Upon  the  crime  of 
human  bondage,  his  soul  is  an  open 
book.  The  faith  that  directed  and  sus- 
stained  him  in  the  mighty  task  of  achiev 
ing  for  his  country  the  "new  birth  of 
freedom "  is  revealed,  with  Hebraic 
grandeur,  in  that  inspired  passage  of  his 
last  address  to  the  nation:  — 

"  Fondly  do  we  hope,  fervently  do 
we  pray,  that  this  mighty  scourge  of 
war  may  speedily  pass  away.  Yet  if 

95 


LINCOLN   AND   SLAVERY 

God  wills  that  it  continue  until  all  the 
wealth  piled  by  the  bondsman's  two 
hundred  and  fifty  years  of  unrequited 
toil  shall  be  sunk,  and  until  every  drop  of 
blood  drawn  with  the  lash  shall  be  paid 
by  another  drawn  with  the  sword,  as 
was  said  three  thousand  years  ago  so 
still  it  must  be  said,  '  The  judgments  of 
the  Lord  are  true  and  righteous  alto 
gether.'  " 

Mystery  and  portent  were  over  and 
about  him  to  the  end.  On  the  morning  of 
his  last  day,  he  said  to  the  assembling 
cabinet,  "  Gentlemen,  something  serious 
is  about  to  happen.  I  have  had  a  strange 
dream,  and  have  a  presentiment  such  as 
I  have  had  several  times  before,  and  al 
ways  just  before  some  important  event. 
.  .  .  But  let  us  proceed  to  business." 
The  business  of  the  day,  following  upon 
the  collapse  of  the  rebellion,  was  to 


LINCOLN   AND   SLAVERY 

hasten  the  return  of  peace  and  national 
unity.  With  no  word  of  triumph,  but 
pardon  and  reconciliation  on  his  lips,  the 
travail  over,  the  task  accomplished,  in 
a  moment  he  was  snatched  from  the 
summit  of  his  greatness  to  pure  and  im 
perishable  fame. 


CAMBRIDGE  .  MASSACHUSETTS 
U    .   G   .   A     ' 


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